QAM channels now maxed at 720p? Tampa area

terabitz

I haven’t had Spectrum TV service for almost a year now, so I’m not sure if this is something that’s changed or if it’s an error, but today at my grandma’s house, I notice all the HD QAM channels are capping at 720p. This is happening on both a 101H box and a Cisco 4742HDC.

Is this something that they are doing nationwide to save spectrum (ha ha)?

MacLeech

terabitz Are the boxes set to 720p output in the menus?

Motorola870

terabitz did they convert the area to MPEG4? Been reporting 720p for the output source on my world boxes since they repacked the QAM carriers for high-split in 2023. I think they are packing them 6:1 ratio on QAM with 720p output or 480i for SD on the few remaining SD feeds that aren’t available in HD.

terabitz

MacLeech All resolutions (480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i) were selected under the resolution settings. The channels were going to the 720p resolution.

terabitz

Motorola870 did they convert the area to MPEG4?

The two channels I spot checked in the box diagnostics showed Is MPEG-4: False. Yet they are still capped to 720p.

MacLeech

terabitz Some channels are broadcast at 720p like ESPNs and other sports channels.

Some older TV, especially early plasmas were also limited to 720p.

Video streams can be MPEG2 or MPEG4. That doesn’t make any difference to their broadcast resolution.

terabitz

MacLeech I know that. These were my local NBC, CBS, Spectrum News and The Weather Channel all coming in at 720p. Channels that are traditionally 1080i.

The TV set is a Samsung 50″ 1080p, and even when the box was manually set to 1080i, the on-screen graphics on a local newscast looked like they were coming from a 720p broadcast getting upscaled.

Motorola870

terabitz They could be capping the video resolution at 720p coming out of the master headend. wouldn’t surprise me if it was done as a cost cutting measure.

MacLeech

Motorola870 wouldn’t surprise me if it was done as a cost cutting measure.

Except it doesn’t save them any money.

terabitz

Motorola870 Is this something they are doing nationwide though? And if not, then why is this happening at my headend in particular?

Motorola870

terabitz I thought it was a part of the high-split prep but if it is spreading they are likely doing it nationwide. Would not surprise me if the spectrum tv app is also only outputting 720p on non 4k content if they still have any on the apple tv boxes.

3dd

Samsung TV’s remote should have a “info” button, and it should show the current resolution. I think channels like ABC and ESPN are always at 720p. When I had the Cisco box, it had a display setting that says like “incoming,” so with that, I could actually tell when I switched to one of these channels. The new Spectrum boxes just have the settings of 720p or 1080p.

Motorola870

The world boxes are reporting video source as 720p on normally 1080i channels and I had the video resolution up to 1080p. So they are downresing to 720p.